By Jimmie Covington
It seems like it would be a simple thing to understand but the top elected officials in Shelby County, the general public and the news media have not been able to grasp it.
Schools are not included in the part of county government that the county mayor is elected to head. The Shelby County Board of Education is a separate branch of government.
The board’s budget goes directly to the County Commission and does not pass through the county administration which the mayor heads. The mayor and the schools are in competition for county funding.
The Shelby County Government Restructure Act, which created the county mayor’s position in the 1970s, said the act did not apply to the school board or school funding “for any purpose” except for two very minor exceptions. The same wording was carried into the county charter, which was approved by voters in 1984.
The last two county mayors, A C Wharton Jr. and Mark Luttrell, made budget proposals and participated with county commissioners in limiting the amount of operations funding schools could receive from county revenue sources. Was this proper?
Lee Harris, the new county mayor, made education a major part of his campaign. Since taking office, Harris proposed and the commissioners approved a new position of schools liaison.
Presumably, the mayor will appoint the liaison. Is it proper for the mayor to have any involvement? Shouldn’t the liaison be an appointee of the commission alone?
This post is written by Jimmie Covington, veteran Memphis reporter with lengthy experience covering governmental, school, and demographic issues. He is a contributing writer with The Best Times, a monthly news magazine for active people 50 and older, and this column is in its October issue.
Putting it a little differently: Is it proper for the County Commission to spend public money to create a new high level employee position for the county mayor to have a liaison with public schools when the mayor has no legal link or responsibilities relating to schools? By the county charter and state law, the commission does have a major role with schools. If commissioners feel they have a need for a liaison with schools, it seems to me the liaison should be an employee of the commission and should report directly to the commission. Also, the commission can only vote on the budget and needs of the county school system. It has no authority relating to the municipal school districts. State law requires that any school funding approved by the commission must be divided among the other districts on a weighted average attendance basis. The official who is given the primary duty to divide the money is the county trustee. It is not just Shelby County that is set up this way. This is the law in all Tennessee counties that have county school districts.
As someone who has spent the last 12+ years as an educator, and now serves as the education committee chairman on the County Commission, I have a bit of a different perspective on this. It is true, per the charter and state law, that the budgetary approval for SCS, without line-item authority, is the responsibility of the commission, and that this authority does not translate to the municipal districts. However, if we were to just leave it at that and call it a day we would be selling our city, county, and our future short. There is no greater investment we can make than in our kids and one of the challenges we have had, in my opinion, is too much inside the box thinking from politicians. We need a comprehensive vision for what educational success looks like in our county, and we need to build relationships across school districts (including charters and the ASD) to start working together instead of in silos. Nobody but ourselves can prevent us from building those relationships and sitting down at the same table. Investing in education must mean more than just the commission’s yearly up or down vote on the SCS budget. We need to be willing to think outside of the box, and act on innovative ways to invest in our future. An education liaison that works with the mayor and commission, in a collaborative way, has limitless potential to help identify these new opportunities. And I intend to personally be a part of it. The county’s leadership on education cannot just be defined as its annual appropriation to SCS. Too much is at stake to keep doing the same things and expecting different results. Real leadership means questioning the status quo and being willing to operate differently and work together toward a common goal of moving Shelby County forward.
It has been my experience that it is not unusual for elected officials to seek to avoid following the law as written. And when they do it often creates problems. And it has not been unusual through the years for county commissioners to seek to avoid their responsibilities by seeking to get the mayor involved in doing things they should be doing themselves. I know the thrust on this thing came from the mayor who is new in office and made education one of the key parts of his campaign. Will the county mayor advocate that tax money be taken away from the parts of government that he heads or otherwise submits budgets for and given to schools? It will be interesting if he does. The developers of the Shelby County Restructure Act and state legislators through the decades decided that county executives should have no role in schools and that members of the county legislative body should have a limited role of approving the county school district’s total budget and approving bonds for school construction. All the key decisions on county schools are in the hands of the elected county school board and I don’t think that is going to change in any material way. Also, the County Commission has absolutely no authority over the municipal school districts. The law requires that they receive a share of all the money that the commission allocates to schools whatever the commission does. It seems to me that since at least 2007, County Commission members whether knowingly or unknowingly have not been very supportive of schools by keeping schools from receiving all the revenue each year from the revenue sources allocated to schools. State law requires that all of the property tax rate allocated to schools go to schools but the same requirement does not apply to wheel tax revenue and other county revenue allocated to schools. The last two administrations have shifted budget figures around to held a cap in place. For several years part of the property tax revenue for schools was held back from one year to the next. Both Tom and I have written about this. You can find what I have written under my name as a contributor to Smart City Memphis. Is the current County Commission going to be any more supportive of schools than the past three commissions have? That also remains to be seen. To a degree, commissioners do not like schools very much because they cannot tell school boards what to do. Through the years, Memphis and Shelby County have done a good job of keeping politicians out of school operations.
Having worked in schools across the country something desperately needs to be done differently in Memphis. One way or another County Commissioners must insure taxpayer funds are being optimized to serve students and the community. A good first start is better communication which a liaison can provide. My guess is that education here locally is much like economic development efforts that have suffered because of poor communication. Regardless of the legalities, better communication is a win-win for all……
It would be proper for the County Commission to appoint a liaison if it wishes. This new liaison would be an appointee of the mayor and not the commission. The elected county board of education and the state department of education have the ultimate authority to run the school district. Presumably, the school board members are the people the voters of Memphis and Shelby County outside the municipal school districts wanted to elect. Before the General Assembly enacted the educational improvement act in the early 1990s, both the county school board and the county schools superintendent were elected by the people or by County Commissions in Tennessee. In Shelby county they were elected by commissioners. “Election” differs from “appointment” in that a person elected to a position by the commission served a four-year term and could not be removed during a term except through an ouster procedure in court. The county mayor did not have the right to nominate anyone for school board and superintendent. The setup on operating schools has been put in place by the state.
So, Jimmie, what would it take to get themayor and commission and school board into compliance with the laws?
Presumably the county mayor and the commissioners could voluntarily decide to start going by the laws, but it does not sound as if that is likely.
Could, then, the school board somehow insist or file suit to enforce the law?
Do citizens have standing to sue to enforce the laws?
The part that bothers me, and should bother many others, is the part where the schools do not receive the tax revenues they are due. I do not know how a liaison, however appointed or employed, will affect that, do you?
The mayor appointing an education liaison (not merely a “schools liaison”) is wise and in no way conflicts with the independence of the school board. Education is one of the most important issues affecting our county, and education is a broader issue than just the county board of education and its legal authority. It’s appropriate for the mayor to have a voice in education. You are right, of course, that the mayor doesn’t have legal authority over the school board, which is why it’s a liaison position, not a director position.
Moreover, the mayor is the “chief fiscal officer of the county.” (County Charter Section 3.02) And when the school board needs money to be borrowed to pay for capital improvements, it is the mayor who is responsible for negotiating and issuing the bonds to pay for the school board’s CIP budget. (County Charter Section 3.03(K)) The operating budget presented annually by the mayor must provide the funding to service the debt for the schools’ CIP budget. The mayor must present and help the commission balance the county’s annual budget, and communicating effectively with the school board (and the sheriff and the clerks) is necessary for the mayor’s job as the chief fiscal officer of the county.
The role of the education liaison is spelled out here and doesn’t conflict with the school board’s or commission’s authority: http://transitionshelby.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/Education-Liaison-Job-Description.pdf
It is clear that the last two mayors and their administrations involved themselves significantly in school funding despite the charter’s prohibitions. Is the new mayor aware of what was done? Maybe the new mayor can give the public a report on why the last mayor recommended and the county commission approved cutting the portion of the county property tax rate allocated to schools by five cents, increasing the portion allocated to general government by six cents and cutting the part allocated to debt service by seven cents. The debt service and general fund money can be switched back and forth easily. The state-approved recapture rate required that the county property tax rate be cut five cents. Where was that cut made and on whose recommendation was it made? It was made by the mayor presumably in his role as chief financial officer and the County Commission went right along with it. The news media never called on the officials involved to explain why they did what they did. I am pretty sure that officials who remain with the government will say “maintenance of effort.” However. that is a false reason that has been used to hold back school funding and has sometimes involved manipulating budget figures. In the past 11 or 12 years, there has been something going on relating to schools. The activity was within the administration and among commissioners. Is the new liaison going to be charged with taking a look at that and making a report to the school board? I am aware of everything that Mr. Morris says. Maybe someone on the commission will develop some expertise relating to schools.
In response to Mr. Clark’s comments: In my view, the school boards and superintendents in recent years have been very lackadaisical in failing to challenge the steps taken by the county administrations and commissioners to put in place a cap on the amount of funding schools could receive from the revenue sources assigned to them. I think the wording added to the tax rate ordinance for several years that directed that part of the property tax revenue for schools be held back from one year to the next if the revenue exceeded the budgeted amount was particularly subject to a legal challenge. And the mayor himself including an education fund in the consolidated budget he submits to commissioners and then enforcing the total revenue listed in that fund as a cap on what schools could receive are possible violations of the charter. Those actions are certainly subject to challenge by school officials politically if not legally. Maybe with the surrender of the city school system’s charter, the merger of the school systems, the lawsuits, the creation of the municipal districts and all the related activity, school officials did not want to get involved in an additional complicated thing. And maybe school officials today and their lawyers are not as aware of all the laws, rules and funding requirements as their predecessors were a few decades ago. If school officials want to be sure schools are treated fairly by county government they need to be willing to challenge county officials to the point of filing lawsuits if necessary. School officials are really the only ones who can do anything about it. In the past two or three years, I have notified a few school and municipal officials about what county officials were doing but they took no action. And it is something that the news media has not been interested in. Do the various news outlets in Memphis today have any reporters who even know how to read a local government or school district budget or financial report? Or are government and school finance things that citizens are not interest in?
Taking a look back in history, there have been times in the past when Shelby County officials have shown strong support for schools without trying to get involved in school operations or limit funding for schools. Back in 1987, then county Mayor Bill Morris proposed a $200 million bond issue with $120 million to go to school construction and the remainder to be spread among The Med (Regional One), road projects, a housing program and, I believe, helping with some debt service costs. To finance the bonds, Morris proposed a wheel tax. Citizens undertook a petition effort to call a referendum to block the tax but they didn’t get enough signatures. No, the bonds were not all for schools. No the tax was never discussed and presented as a temporary tax. (A referendum was held a year or two later on approving a local sales tax increase that would be only temporarily to provide some more money for school operations. Voters rejected the sales tax increase but the public apparently got the sales tax referendum confused with the approval of the wheel tax by the County Commission. Many people today still say today that the wheel tax was supposed to be a temporary tax.) During one of his two terms after his elections as county mayor in 1994 and 1994, Rout worked out an eight-year, agreement that would provide $655.2 million in bond funds for city and county school construction. The agreement and the bonds were approved by the commission. And then during Rout’s second term, commissioners acting independently of the mayor, achieved the votes of nine members, including both Republicans and Democrats, in 2001 and approved a 43-cent property tax increase and a doubling of the wheel tax to support school operations. I don’t believe any commissions that have come into office since then have given schools that much support during a single year. And the administrations of the two mayors–A C Wharton and Mark Luttrell–didn’t stay out of school operations funding–like Morris and Rout did. The actions of some of the commissioners were negative toward schools as they worked with the administrations to take more control over and place more limits over school funding. I am not sure that some of the commissioners during Luttrell’s administrations ever fully understood what was going on relating to schools. Anyone who wishes can look back at the Education Fund in the county’s current fiscal 2019 operating budget and find a chart that shows that schools’ operating funds from the county were capped at $361.2 million for the six-years 2008 through 2013 and were just $1.26 million higher than the total in fiscal 2007. The chart shows an increase of $34 million from 2005 to 2006. I don’t know what the increase reflects. (Here’s a link to the education fund document on line.) I will have to go back and check the records in the county archives when I get a chance. It seems clear that county mayors Morris and Rout and county commissioners in their day didn’t have any trouble communicating with school officials and didn’t need the assistance of a liaison. The Wharton administration followed by the Luttrell administration didn’t either. Not sure how well they communicated with school officials. They decided they wanted to put a cap on the total revenue that schools received from their county revenue sources and they went ahead and did it. Went back and checked the county’s comprehensive annual financial report and the first fiscal year that the education fund showed up was fiscal 2009. That’s the vehicle they used to keep the cap in place. Methinks, that the county school board should designate an accountant to go over and check county government’s financial records to see what the county has been doing on school funding. Somewhere at least as far back as 2000, the leaders of the city’s newspaper decided they did not want to report the details of local governments and school districts. There would be a few investigative pieces here and there but little time or effort would be spent on school funding and things like that. This is the same time that Memphis city government was working its way into problems with employee insurance and pension benefits and things like that.